Saturday, February 13, 2010

When I was a small boy, about 6 or 7, I remember throwing stones at the passing cars. Okay, not bricks, but it seemed fun at the time, until I got bust and had my rump tanned. But we are an increasingly intolerant, barbaric society.

More recently, I told a taxi driver to "go fuck himself", and was promptly attacked with a knife in broad daylight. My how times have changed.

We, as a "civilised" society, will not condone the death sentence, yet we will kill for the slightest provocation.

Oh, and why is the victims race important? Because it goes to show motive.

A schoolboy who threw a stone on to the windscreen of a truck was chased down by one of the truck's passengers and stabbed to death in the road.

Keenan Drial, 14, of Beacon Valley, Mitchells Plain, Cape Town, was stabbed in the heart on Thursday and bundled into the truck, which then drove off.

Two men have been arrested on charges of murder and kidnapping. A third is still being sought by Mitchells Plain police and an arrest is imminent.

Keenan and three friends had bunked school and were hiding in thick bush between Oval North Technical High and Swartklip Road. Still dressed in their uniforms, the boys were throwing stones at vehicles.

When a brick smashed a delivery truck's windscreen, the truck screeched to a halt and two men gave chase.

A witness described how one of the men dragged the terrified boy into the road and stabbed him with a box cutter.

The men bundled Drial into their truck, dumped his body outside Khayelitsha's Harare police station and sped off. Police have arrested two men.

If you are going to hurl bricks (as the newspapers say) at passing traffic, then you have to take it. With the current crime and fear these days, no wonder the kid got stabbed (right or wrong is is a matter if you have been a victim or not)

When I was that age, me and my buddies were farking terrorists, we put bricks in the road and stones on railway lines. My arse got spanked raw by my father and it was humiliating to be "arrested" (and released into parental custody) by the railway police for "sabotage". But I was never stabbed for being such a menace. Now, later, I regret my "katakwaad" deeply, I could have been a better behaved lad, and probably would have been richer and wiser had I not been such a little shit. But at least I survived to regret it...